NeuroImage Clinical
October 19, 2017
176 citations
Pain, whether acute or chronic, disrupts the default mode network (DMN), a brain system involved in attention, memory, and self-awareness. Using fMRI, the authors measured brain activity in chronic orofacial pain patients at rest and in healthy volunteers experiencing a 20-minute tonic pain stimulus. Both groups showed decreased oscillatory activity in key DMN regions and altered connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and other DMN areas. These similar DMN changes suggest they reflect the presence of pain itself, not just chronic pain, and may underlie the attention and mental flexibility deficits seen in pain states.
NeuroImage Clinical
August 22, 2015
Rainer Kraehenmann, André Schmidt, Karl Friston et al.
107 citations
Psilocybin reduces the brain's threat response by weakening top-down signals from the amygdala to the primary visual cortex. Using dynamic causal modeling of fMRI data, researchers found that psilocybin decreased the threat-induced modulation of this specific connection within the visual-limbic-prefrontal network. This neural mechanism may help explain how psilocybin shifts emotional processing away from negative toward positive stimuli, which could be relevant for treating mood and anxiety disorders.
NeuroImage Clinical
January 1, 2018
Felix Mueller, Francesco Musso, Markus K. London et al.
65 citations
A subanesthetic dose of S-Ketamine, an NMDAR antagonist, alters resting-state brain connectivity in healthy men. In the executive control network, ketamine increased connectivity with the anterior cingulum and superior frontal gyrus, but these changes did not correlate with clinical symptoms. In the salience network, ketamine decreased connectivity with the calcarine fissure, and this decrease correlated with negative symptoms measured by the PANSS (R² > 0.4). The findings suggest that reduced salience network connectivity may serve as a predictive biomarker for ketamine-induced negative symptoms relevant to schizophrenia research.
NeuroImage Clinical
January 1, 2025
3 citations
A meta-analysis of 18 experiments with 302 depressed patients found that effective depression treatment—whether pharmacology, psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, psilocybin, or ketamine—consistently changes brain activity in the right amygdala. Across studies, activity in this region decreased after treatment. The finding suggests that the right amygdala is a key brain area for tracking depression treatment effects with fMRI, offering a target for future biomarker research.